Details

When an Office Open XML document is protected with a password and saved, any metadata associated with the document is encrypted along with the rest of the document’s contents. If this configuration is changed, potentially sensitive information such as the document author and hyperlink references could be exposed to unauthorized people.

Solution

Set the policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2010 -> Security Settings ‘Protect document metadata for password protected files’ to ‘Enabled’.

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_MS_OfficeSystem_2010_V1R12_STIG.zip

This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: System and Communications Protection.This control applies to the following type of system Windows.

References

• 800-53|SC-28
• CAT|II
• CCI|CCI-001199
• Rule-ID|SV-33467r1_rule
• STIG-ID|DTOO188
• Vuln-ID|V-17768

Source

• Tenable.com/audits